Gar Alperovitz: How The Big Banks Run the World.

The recent Public Banking conference held in Philadelphia offered a message that is at once so simple, but also so bold, it is hard for most Americans to pause long enough to understand how profoundly their thinking had been corralled by the masters of finance, in ways far, far, far more insidious and powerful than even the latest financial crisis suggests. To understand what has happened, however, you first have to take a minute to shake a few cobwebs out of your brain about "money", and how it is created and by whom and for whose benefit. Money is "created"? Yes, obviously so, or did you imagine there is some fixed pile of "money" some place that exists once and for all and for all times? Think about it: If that were true, it would be impossible for the economy ever to change and grow. If the "money supply" were not increased over time, the original economy of, say, 1776, which served about 2.5 million Americans, would still define the amount of "money" we would have to work with today. And yes, going back further, if money were not increased, the amount that existed even in a far smaller economy prior to 1776 would be all there was and is, even down to today. Once you realize money must be and is regularly created and expanded, then the interesting questions begin to occur, like "How is it done? and Who benefits from it?" Step One: Most people think of money as something real, something that is kind of like gold or silver, or anything that has intrinsic value. Allowing for a very, very few minor exceptions, that is simply not what money is: Money in the real world is a piece of paper, or electronic version of the same, that is a promissory note, a promise to pay you, that legally must be accepted by anyone to whom it is given to settle a debt.